DC's dream TV slate

I really want DC to still be my favourite comics publisher in five years' time, but dammit, I just can't help but admire Marvel. Their film slate is brilliant, they have just announced a black/Hispanic Ultimate Spider-Man, and on top of that they've got some great-sounding TV shows in the works. Jeph Loeb, he of Smallville and Heroes (and, yes, formally of DC) is heading up their TV development and is currently overseeing AKA Jessica Jones (which I would watch yesterday if I could), Mockingbird (I confess I know very little about her) and Cloak and Dagger.

Everyone knows that a TV show is the best way to make a completely new audience aware of a comic book character. But Marvel are being especially savvy with this line-up, because not only are they targeting a new audience, they're targeting under-served demographics. All three projects have women in the title roles, and two of them boast black leading men. Neither groups make up the typical comics readership of 18-31 year old white men. If these shows get to TV (which of course isn't guaranteed), Marvel could successfully widen their catchment net dramatically.

Elsewhere, DC have a Wonder Woman show that couldn't get past the pilot and a show aboout Raven in development. Not so inspiring in comparison. Frustratingly, DC have many great characters who would make for brilliant TV leads. They cocked up with Birds of Prey (how did the TV series get it so wrong?), but they've seen first hand what TV success looks like with Smallville and Lois and Clark.

Here are the DC projects/characters, which, for my money, would make for great shows and also, potentially, attract a more diverse audience.

Gotham Central There's not a DC fan alive (over 18) who wouldn't put this at the top of their TV wishlist. It's The Wire of the DCU, and not just because it's a police procedural, but because it is in a class of its own. Great characters, great stories and villains that range from the outlandish Gotham villains like Two Face and Mr Freeze to real-world bad guys like Corrigan.

Casual viewers may wonder why a show set in Gotham has hardly any Batman (and not even very much Commissioner Gordon), but Renee Montoya and Crispus Allen would soon win them over. It also has an incredibly diverse cast and would make for a brilliantly original police show. Why aren't DC putting this into production right now?!

Writer: Is suggesting David Simon too much of a cliche? Actually, I think I'd want comic writer Ed Brubaker to oversee the transition to TV.

Teen TitansScrew a Raven TV show - just do the Teen Titans. You'll end up bringing most of them in as guest stars in Raven anyway, and besides, she works much better as a peripheral character slowly revealed to be far more powerful and screwed-up than anyone realised than as a main character.

Any Teen Titans team would work, but my favourite was always the New Teen Titans line-up: Dick Grayson's Robin/Nightwing, Donna Troy, Starfire, Raven, Cyborg and Beast Boy, with Wally West's Kid Flash and Roy Harper's Speedy/Aresnal popping up here and there. The wealth of back-story would be a problem, but with smart dialogue, a good mix of drama and action and a healthy vein of comedy (and a budget big enough to cover a green guy who turns into animals) it would be, well, the new Buffy. It would attract a hefty teenage - and female - audience.

Writer: And who better to write a teenage ensemble piece with great female characters than the Buffy maestro himself, Joss Whedon? Failing that (since he's rather busy with The Avengers and what-not), Bryan Q Miller, he of Smalllville and Batgirl, would be a good shout. Basically, anyone but Josh Schwartz.

Zatanna
She'd make a great TV lead, juggling a showbiz career and a superhero alter ego, wielding a power that she hasn't quite got her head round yet and featuring a supporting cast of DC's magical characters. I'd put her in her mid-20s and take inspiration from Grant Morrison's Seven Soldiers interpretation, pegging Zee as a bit of a screw-up who drinks too much, has very inapproriate taste in men (Batman and Constantine? Girl likes a bad boy) and has a very sharp, smart tongue, even when she's speaking words the right way round.

Plus, because's Zatanna's character mythology isn't set in stone (unlike, say, Superman's), the series would have more freedom to create friends, love interests and villains for her, all things that Zee's been lacking in comics.

Writer: Since Zee is a fast-talking girl, we're looking at Pushing Daisies' Bryan Fuller, or Gilmore Girls' Amy Sherman. Also, I wouldn't hate Rachel Bilson as Zatanna herself.

Hellblazer

John Constantine, as brought to screen in a British-American co-production would just be heaven. British cast, locations, black humour and grit, with American money. It's about time the Keanu version was wiped from audiences' minds, and this would be the way to do it.

Constantine is one of comics' best, and most under-used, characters and a TV show would fit him perfectly. It would also bring in a new British audience, who are not typically comic book readers. It's just a shame that Mark Sheppard doesn't remotely look the part, because I can't think of anyone who embodies Constantine's sardonic spirit quite so perfectly. Ah, hell. Cast him anyway.

Writer: Oh, so many British writers who I'd love to see tackle Hellblazer. Mark Gatiss has the gothic sensibilities, Steven Moffat has the smart plotting, Paul Abbott has the realistic grit. But I think their best bet may lie in persuading Jane Goldman to take a TV job.

Secret Six

Mainly because it's not a Follow The Nerd post if Secret Six aren't mentioned somewhere. Also, because it would be brilliant. Super-violent, morally bankrupt and inventively weird. It would be a shame to lose their interactions with DC's more mainstream heroes (I don't really see Wonder Woman guest staring in a TV version of Secret Six) but they have a good enough cast of their own allies and villains to more than fill a series, although some liberties will have to be taken as to their origin story. The adult content, mixed-gender characters and a hefty dose of LGBT themes will attract an audience other than the Smallville loyalists.

Also, cast Josh Holloway or Jared Padalecki as Catman and have him be naked a lot. That'll attract a certain audience right off the bat.

Writer: It seems impossible to imagine anyone but Gail Simone writing these guys. But I reckon Ben Edlund (formally of Firefly and The Tick, currently writing the weirdest - and best - episodes of Supernatural) would do a great job.

Catwoman

Selina Kyle is a ready-made leading woman. I'd take a heavy influence from Brubaker's run on her book and give it a great gumshoe vibe and a supporting cast including Holly, Karon, Slam Bradley and Leslie Thompkins. The fact that Catwoman is inextricably linked to Batman could cause problems, but she has enough of her own history and stories to carry a good few series' without him: Her training with Wildcat, her background with the Falcone family, her childhood on the streets and rise to wealthy society burglar extraordinaire, with a social conscience. Robin Hood in Louboutins.

Writer: Veronica Mars and Cupid's Rob Thomas.

Booster Gold

Okay, so a show about Booster Gold won't bring in anyone other than DC's usual white male 18-31 audience. But come on, who wouldn't want to see a comedy action show about the world's tackiest superhero? (I have a soft spot for Booster.)

Writer: Ben Edlund would be pretty good for this one too. Damn. But I'll go with Reaper's Tara Butters and Michelle Fazekas.

Blue Beetle

Jaime Reyes' Blue Beetle is DC's somewhat belated answer to Spider-Man: A gawky teenage boy gifted amazing powers overnight has to juggle high school, home life and superheroics. And Jaime isn't always very good at it, mostly getting by on self-deprecating wit and a hefty dose of luck (and a symbiotic alien). He also has Traci 13, who, as love interests go, is pretty awesome.

This show would have a fun, young feel, all teenage angst and action.

Writer: Oh, alright. Josh Schwartz can have this one.

Wonder Woman

Just because David E Kelley's version didn't work, doesn't mean DC should abandon Wonder Woman altogether. I'd like to see a take on the character that wears her Greek myth background with pride and actually features the other Amazons. There's humour to be mined from Diana arriving on Earth for the first time, a fish-out-of-water tale, and Kelley's version missed a trick by having her already settled on Earth.

Wonder Woman should have humour, heart and heroism, and I'd love to see her brought to the screen properly.

Writer: Former WhedonVerse writer, BSG and Torchwood scribe Jane Espensen.

Where did all the gay men go?

Let me start this by saying that gay people have more exposure than they have ever had in mainstream media, and that's a good thing. Every soap has at least one gay character, and dramas (on HBO, at least) are finally letting their gay characters be defined by something other than their sexuality (hooray for Omar and Lafeyette). It's also been said that the best place for gay characters is genre shows, where they aren't just dealing with coming out and homophobia, they also have to pilot spaceships and save the world.

But I've noticed a bit of a bias over the years, particularly in the world of sci-fi and superheroes. Lots of fiesty, fleshed-out lesbians, and hardly any gay men. Look at Battlestar Galactica, one of my favourite ever shows. In the TV BSG movie Razor, Admiral Cain, a relatively minor character, was shown in a lesbian relationship with the not-unattractive Six. By the time the movie aired, Cain had been killed off and her background, while interesting, didn't really add anything. Meanwhile, there was Felix Gaeta, a solid supporting character who'd been there from episode one. He was revealed as bisexual in a web series, but his sexuality was not once referenced in the main show, even though it helped make sense of his motivations throughout the series, especially his somewhat personal reaction when Gaius Baltar betrayed him and the entire human race. The makers seemed happy to show lesbians on the main show, even when it was pretty much irrelevant, but a major plot development relating to an important character was sidelined to a web show.

Then look at He Who Can Do No Wrong Joss Whedon. Willow and Tara in Buffy were just lovely. One of the best and least provocative depictions of a lesbian relationship on TV, to this day. They fought, they had sex, they supported each other, and their friends excepted them with barely a word. Elsewhere, though, I give you Andrew, a character who was clearly gay. And yet when Whedon wanted to show how Andrew had matured as a person over on Angel, he had him going off to a ball on the arms of two beautiful women. How hard would it have been for Andrew to head off into the sunset with a hot guy in a tux? Again, a lesbian couple who were treated sensitively and sympathetically, and a gay character who was comic relief, and then inexplicably straight.

Comics are much the same. Marvel is doing better, in their earnest way, with Young Avengers Wiccan and Hulkling and X-Factor's Rictor and Shatterstar, but DC is disgracefully devoid of gay male characters. Not gay characters, I'll stress, because they currently boast three brilliant lesbians: Renee Montoya, Scandal Savage and even Batwoman. They are often sidelined by some writers, but in the hands of their principle writers (Greg Rucka and Gail Simone) they are three of DC's best characters.

But where are DC's gay male characters? Um... Todd Rice, his lawyer boyfriend, Creote... erm... Kyle Rayner's mate, who was gay-bashed... Please, tell me if I'm missing anyone, but those are the only ones I can think of. I'm not sure exactly what percentage of people are gay in the real world, but I'm pretty certain it's a larger percentage than is depicted in the DCU, male and female. Would it be that difficult for them to introduce a gay Teen Titan? (teenagers are meant to experiment with their sexuality, the Titans seems like the natural home for a new gay character). And there are plenty of existing characters who could fairly organically be revealed as gay or bisexual. Connor Hawke, Tim Drake, Dinah Lance, Joseph Wilson.

When it comes to the dominance of lesbian characters over gay ones in the sci-fi genre, I can only reach one (sad) conclusion: the male, middle-aged Powers That Be don't feel threatened by lesbians. They think they're hot. Gay men, however, represent the fear of the unknown, something they consider a little bit, well, disgusting. Something they don't want to corrupt the young male viewers/readers with. They recognise that in these modern days they need to acknowledge the existance of homosexuals, but they go for what they view as the 'safe' option: lesbians. Added to that is the assumption that lesbians are more masculine, and therefore more likely to be tough heroes, whereas gay men are considered to be effeminate, so hardly hero material.

Luckily, this thinking has allowed some brilliant female characters to sneak through the misogynistic net and carve a vivid, powerful route of their own. But the arse-kicking, swashbuckling gay heroes are still trapped in the red tape, waiting for a new generation of Big Boss Men to let them do their stuff. And who wouldn't want to watch a show about a gay space pirate?